“I hope, miss,” she said to me, with an air of grave rebuke, “your conscience tells you that you’re a suitable object for Mrs Hurstwood’s kindness?”
“Indeed, madam, my dear Mrs Hurstwood has always been too partial to my faults.”
“Perhaps you han’t considered, miss, that what we have heard of your adventures” (yes, Amelia, she went so far as to use that term) “will scarce entitle you to be received again in Calcutta. I had thought better of you than to expect to find you imposing on Mrs Hurstwood’s good nature. Sure a humble retirement would befit you better.”
Mr Fraser had raised himself angrily to speak when Mrs Bentinck made use of the horrid word adventures, but Charlotte gave him a signal to keep silent. Now she spoke with the greatest coolness in the world.
“Sure, madam, you must mistake my friend for some other person. This is Mrs Fraser, the wife of the gentleman yonder, with whom your spouse has, I believe, some acquaintance.”
“Questionless he has married her in hopes of her papa’s money,” says Mrs Bentinck, as though she spoke to herself, but so loud that we could all hear.
“Madam!” I cried, very hotly, “Mr Fraser married me at a moment when all that he could hope for was to share the perils that menaced me.”
“I fear, sir,” she continued, as though I had not spoken, “you’ll be disappointed to hear that Mr Freyne’s wealth was by no means so great as was commonly supposed.”
“Why, then I’m rightly punished, madam,” says Mr Fraser, with infinite cheerfulness.
“And of what there is,” she cried, vexed by his coolness, “not an anna that I can keep my hands on shall go to the creature you’ve married.”